Three men's voices alternative in telling what might or might not be a single story, possibly about but certainly including a crime, and certainly illuminating the lives of a group of largely unfocused young people trying to make lives for themselves in the resort town of Z, not far from Barcelona. The Skating Rink will not disappoint Bolaño fans who value his first-person narratives from characters with poetic expression and surprisingly observed detail.

The three voices narrating The Skating Rink are perhaps less distinct than they might be, although their fairly similar age might partly account for them sounding a bit alike. Several women, young and older, are deftly and attractively portrayed, and, we feel, have the best part of Bolaño's attention.

The air of illusion, even magic, tends to disarm the reader in the best way, as the story unfolds of the abandoned mansion in which a dream of a most prosaic of the narrators is conceived and born. That the dream has a short life within the confines of the novel doesn't detract from its luminous appeal, and the open ending admits possibilities of continued transformation.

Chris Andrews has again provided a virtually invisible translation, so clearly in what we English-language readers of Bolaño recognize as his characteristic fiction voice that its accuracy seems supported by its beautiful measured cadences.

An interesting, enjoyable book. Although the review said it has a lot in common with a police procedural that was the least interesting aspect. The kaleidoscope narrative from the perspective of three different narrators -- many of whom don't like each other -- centers around a a beautiful ice skater, a rink a bureaucrat diverts money to build, an aging opera singer, and her young friend. Unique, looking forward to reading more by Bolano. ( )

The Skating rink is told through the successive narratives of three male characters, one a corrupt petty Gov’t official, one a small town entrepreneur and the third a poet (the Bolano Character). The plot, as do the male characters, circle around a beautiful professional figure skater called Nuria, who has lost her place on the Spanish national team & in the process her training venue. The Gov’t official obsessed with Nuria, steps in to save the day & with delusions of heroic worth, diverts Gov’t money to fund the building of a secret skating rink in an abandoned villa, high up on the coast. Of all the novels by Bolano this is the closest to an out and out crime story, although seen through the lens of this particular writer, there is a murder, there are signposts alerting you along the way (the outline of a knife visible through clothing, the mental instability of one the characters etc.), and, although the murder is solved, when the body is found about two-thirds of the way through the book, it is almost an after thought. In this book there is no Detective, sleuthing away, the crime is mundane, an occurrence, there is no cry for justice, this is all about implication, or how to avoid it. The three men are not bothered by who has died, or how, just how it affects their lives. There’s no honour here, no heroism that's not sullied by self interest, or self regard. So although this book features a death, someone is actually murdered, this merely acts as a spotlight onto the characters, making The Skating Rink a Detective tale where the crime is secondary to the protagonists involved.

This book had me puzzled, it reminded me of another book, and at first I thought it was Lawrence Durrell’s “ The Alexandria Quartet” which as a tetralogy offers us four perspectives via four novels on the same series of events. But that wasn’t it. It was then I realised that it was a tale I’d read last year in Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Rashomon and 17 other stories, this tale "In the bamboo grove" concerns the murder of a traveller & the alleged rape of his wife, and is told through the differing perspectives of the various witnesses, all of who have their own agenda (including the deceased), yet with this story, there is blood and passion, which although it appears in the Skating Rink it’s more theoretical. Yes the official obsesses over the skater, yet it’s how it affects him, not her, that concerns him, and although the entrepreneur sleeps with Nuria, this seems to be more of a convenience between them both.

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When figure skater Nuria Marti is dropped from the Olympic team, a civil servant secretly uses public funds to build her a skating rink in the ruins of a seaside mansion, but Nuria has affairs and soon the rink becomes a crime scene.